Thursday, 19 July 2012

The olden days

In the mid 1970s, a year 9 (3rd form, for oldies) student asked me "Were you alive in the olden days, when men went to the moon?" I discovered tonight proof that I was alive in the olden days when people contributed to online news and opinion by posting to mailing lists. Ah, Usenet!

Here's a post I made to comp.risks from June 1995; I had a dialup connection to the VAX network at Otago University, via Telecom's Starnet packet switching network. I may have been the only person in Wanaka who was on the internet, now I think about it. I remember rushing to send the email before going back to school - we used to go home for lunch, now that WAS the olden days!

You can read the full post here; it's about an NZPA article saying that caching breaks copyright law - ideas have moved on somewhat. Although maybe not; in 2012 we're still trying to educate people about online copyright, even if we're more relaxed about caching.